and Maune that of his son. The unhappy couple had committed suicide together. He looked from one doctor to the other.
The doctors felt almost the same reaction. They saw the utter horror of their whole lives, the far pit into which their minds had hurled them. The brutality of Jules Dérroil also flashed home to them. They were seized with a simultaneous desire—to kill him.
Dérroil was strong and his muscles hard from the daily paddling, but he was no match for the half-crazed and infuriated doctors. They banged him about the room, overturning the furniture and making considerable noise. One doctor held him by the throat. The other plucked a flaming stick from the fire and thrust it into his face. Dérroil screamed a horrible scream. The heavy knife by the fire was next in Le Gle's hands, and the head of the fiend soon fell to the floor. The body sagged and tumbled in a heap.
Scarcely had the murder been committed when the door of the house burst open and the gendarmes rushed into the room. They had been sent for by the nearest neighbors, who had heard the screams and sounds.
Dr. Le Glé and Dr. Maune were never tried for the murder of Jules Dérroil. The grievous nature of the affair worked in their favor; the public was satisfied that the mystery of the numerous headless bodies found in the river was cleared up; and some newspapers even congratulated the physicians for ridding Paris of the fiend of the Seine.
Whispers of heavenly death murmured I hear,
Labial gossip of night, sibilant chorals,
Footsteps gently ascending, mystieal breezes wafted soft and low,
Ripple of unseen rivers, tides of a current flowing, forever flowing
(Or is it the plashing of tears? the measureless waters of human tears?)
I see, just skyward, great cloud-masses,
Mournfully, slowly they roll, silently swelling and mixing,
With at times a half-dimmed saddened far-off star
Appearing and disappearing.
(Some parturition rather, some solemn immortal birth;
On the frontiers to eyes impenetrable.
Some soul is passing over.)
